!Help file for !Shanghai
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Version 1.04 (2nd Dec 2002) 2000 Paul Vigay
'Dacha' tile set J.David Barrow (Dacha)

Acknowledgements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I would like to thank J.David Barrow for the 'dacha' tile set. This was hand-crafted
by him and he has kindly given me his permission to include it.
For more interesting goodies, visit his web site at http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/


Purpose
~~~~~~~
Entertainment! Simple really.
Remove all the tiles from the board.


Rules
~~~~~
There are 144 tiles, consisting of four each of the following tiles;
	Nine 'stick' (suozi or tao) suit of pieces numbered 1 to 9
	Nine 'wheel' (tongzi) suit of pieces numbered 1 to 9
	Nine 'number' (wnzi) suit of pieces numbered 1 to 9
        Four 'wind' tiles, representing the four compass directions; east/south/west/north
        Three 'dragon' files (red, green and white)
        Four 'flower' (huapi) tiles (Plum, Orchid, Chrysanthemum and Bamboo)
        Four 'season' tiles (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter)

The pieces are arranged at random on a rectangular grid, some placed on top of others
forming a shallow pyramid.
You must remove two matching tiles at a time, with the aim being to remove all tiles
from the board. 
A piece can only be removed if it is not overlapped by another and has a free space
either to the left or right of it.

The RISC OS version can tell you how many moves are possible at any time (depending upon
the level) and optionally give you a hint.

However, asking for a hint will add a ten second penalty to your score.
Once you have removed two tiles you cannot generally replace them. However, this version
includes an unlimited undo feature, if you decide that you really didn't want to remove
the tiles you did. For each undo, you get a twenty second penalty.

If you succeed in removing all tiles, you will make it to the high score table if your
time is quick enough.


Main Menu
~~~~~~~~~
The main menu consists of the following options:-
	Info          Move the pointer right to see application info and version number.

	Undo          Undo the last move you made. However, this will encur a penalty
	              of 20 seconds onto your score.

	New Game      This will restart a new game. Hold SHIFT down to restart with the
	              same tile layout.

	Choices       Open the choices submenu (see below)

	High Scores   View the top ten high scores.


Choices
~~~~~~~
This will open a submenu containing the following customisation options:-

	Difficulty:
		Easy	Display of how many moves are possible at any one time.
		Medium	No display of moves, but you can click on 'Clue' for a clue.
		Hard	No display of moves and no clues available.
	
	Spacing:
		Smallest 0 pixel gap between adjacent tiles
		Small	 4 pixels gap between adjacent tiles
		Medium	 8 pixels gap between adjacent tiles
		Large	 12 pixels gap between adjacent tiles
		Largest	 16 pixels gap between adjacent tiles
		
	Colour:
		Select the colour of the playing board.
		N.B. Colour 1 has a special property in that it allows you to
		select a board style. (see 'additional files', below)
		
	Tile set:
		Allows you to choose from a range of different tile sets.
		N.B. See 'additonal files', below for more info.
		
	Save:
		Save the choices to disc.
		

Hints
~~~~~
At any point when you have the choice to restart the game, if you hold the SHIFT key
down when restarting, the same order and layout of tiles will be used again. This
allows you to restart the game with the same tile layout so that you can try a
different strategy.


Additional Files
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From version 1.02 onwards you can add your own fancy background and custom sets of
tiles.
If you want to add your own background, create a sprite called "tile_1" and save it
in the !Shanghai.Boards directory. Make sure it is less than 32K (32768 bytes) long
and that there are no more than 10 different files (max limitation).
If you wish to create your own sets of tiles, this is slightly more tricky, as the
actual sprite names MUST match the existing format (if in doubt, check the 'dacha'
file). Save them inside !Shanghai.Tiles. Again you can have up to 10 different files.
The maximum file size must not exceed 288K (294912 bytes).
There are additional 'safety' features build into !Shanghai in that any files that
are too long won't appear on the relevant menu, and more than 10 files will be
ignored after the 10th.
If in doubt email me for more information.


Copyright and Application Status
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Written by Paul Vigay, Mar 2000. This program is freeware, on the condition
that it is copied in it's entirety without any files being changed.

However, any donations will be gratefully accepted and will help inspire me
to do further development and support the RISC OS/Acorn software market.
A fiver would be nice, to cover some of the electricity used whilst coding
and to buy more packets of tea or Hobnobs for all those late nights.

The copyright remains with me, the author (Paul Vigay) at all times.


Contacting me
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can contact me in several ways:-
* Email me at pvigay@interalpha.co.uk
* Go my Acorn Shareware page on the internet at http://www.vigay.com/shareware.html
* Write to me at 104 Manners Road, Southsea, Hampshire, PO4 0BG


History
~~~~~~~
The following is a list of changes between the different release versions of Shanghai.
The latest version is always listed first. Check my web site above for any new versions.

v1.03b (12th Apr 2000)
             a) Amended templates file so that window backgrounds can't be clicked upon.
             b) Modified some of the messages to be more uniform. Restart is now New Game.

v1.03a (11th Apr 2000)
             a) Minor bug fix which stopped you from selecting the first background
                tile design.


v1.03 (5th Apr 2000)
             a) Fixed memory leakage bug which caused the game to 'crash' after 20
                consecutive restarts.
             b) Added option to restart using the same tile layout.

             
v1.02 (31st Mar 2000)
             a) Made control icons 3D (thanks to Weiss Niklaus for the suggestion)
             b) Added choices menu (and moved background color from 'Messages' file
                to menu option.)
             
   
v1.01 (30th Mar 2000)
	     a) Added the facility to adjust the tile spacing. This value is stored
		within the !Shanghai.Resources.Messages file. Edit the line that
		starts 'spacing:' so that the value is between 0 (no spaces) and
		16 (maximum spacing)
		N.B. Anything outside this range will default to 0.


v1.00 (27th Mar 2000)
		First release version - pretty much bug free! :-)

2000 Paul Vigay
